cientists have found further evidence that dolphins call each other by "name".
Research has revealed that the marine mammals use a unique whistle to identify each other.
A team from the University of St Andrews in Scotland found that when the animals hear their own call played back to them, they respond.
The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr Vincent Janik, from the university's Sea Mammal Research Unit, said: "(Dolphins) live in this three-dimensional environment, offshore without any kind of landmarks and they need to stay together as a group.
"These animals live in an environment where they need a very efficient system to stay in touch."
Signature whistles
It had been-long suspected that dolphins use distinctive whistles in much the same way that humans use names.
Previous research found that these calls were used frequently, and dolphins in the same groups were able to learn and copy the unusual sounds.
But this is the first time that the animals response to being addressed by their "name" has been studied.
To investigate, researchers recorded a group of wild bottlenose dolphins, capturing each animal's signature sound.
They then played these calls back using underwater speakers.
"We played signature whistles of animals in the group, we also played other whistles in their repertoire and then signature whistles of different populations - animals they had never seen in their lives," explained Dr Janik.
The researchers found that individuals only responded to their own calls, by sounding their whistle back.
The team believes the dolphins are acting like humans: when they hear their name, they answer.
In other words, Dr. Win Wenger PhD has been on to something here for a while...
How to Understand the Dolphin Language
It's a very simple procedure, really, ready for you to try out for yourself, to see what you find with it! We've gotten the results we have with it as you see below. You are more than welcome to try the procedure yourself and get your own remarkable results. There is a lot of room for you to discover much more about dolphins — or about any other species — than we already have, or to challenge our own findings after you have experimented with our little procedure.
Active skepticism (not closed, passive, impenetrable, reflexive skepticism) is the most productive way to be. Automatic reflexive belief and automatic reflexive disbelief are equally unproductive. Check things out for yourself; don't just assume they are as we say, or assume that they cannot be and that's that.
That willingness to test is what has moved science and technology way ahead of other areas of human activity. And in this instance, testing our little "Borrowed Genius" procedure (and checking our own results) will also open for you immense windows and vistas not otherwise available to you. (So have fun!.....)
This "Borrowed Genius" procedure is actually thousands of years old, and it helped our ancestors to survive.
The Bear Clan would experience putting on the heads and persona of bears, to better understand the wilderness from which they had to make a living. So also did the Eagle Clan, the Deer Clan and so many other tribal units clear around the world, because that, in fact, did help them survive.
Athletes have put on the heads and persona of other great athletes, to pick up insights on how to compete more effectively. NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) has made enormous headway by "stealing behaviors" (modeling on someone else's patterns, which closely compares with "Borrowed Genius").
"Borrowed Genius" is now being used as a very highly effective technique for accelerated learning in any subject. You can find a completely detailed free script of specific steps and laboratory protocol for the Borrowed Geniusprocedure on this website. You will most likely find it quite easy to follow those specific steps of direction and perform the procedure, to get whatever results await you.
A variety of "animal whisperer" techniques now exist for obtaining understandings from horses, dogs, cats and other animals. Some practitioners believe this to be true telepathy, and perhaps it is.
The more science-minded among us point to recent discoveries about "mirror neurons" which we humans, uniquely among land animals at least, are richly endowed with, which allow us to anticipate and model after the behaviors of others. With these neurons, we humans build internal models of the actions and feelings of others, with astonishingly detailed accuracy.
Whether that is sufficient to account for the truly remarkable specific accuracies obtainable from these various "animal whisperer" techniques and from "Borrowed Genius," however, may be questioned — a debate that can be settled only when more researchers seriously investigate it.
Until such research is finally done, though, we have a very powerful way to investigate and learn from the other main intelligent species with whom we share this planet, notably whales and dolphins. We know they are intelligent, both from their actions and from their enormous brains. We know they have complex and meaningful languages, but for long decades we've been utterly frustrated because we haven't even begun to figure out how to decipher and understand these languages.
There is a very good reason why we, until now, haven't been able to understand dolphinese and cetacean. See that reason below. A very simple half-hour investigation by yours truly, using the "Borrowed Genius" procedure, gave us the key. You are strongly encouraged to make your own investigation, both to check our results and to find your own keys to understanding dolphins, whales and other animals.
By publishing this article we hope to make contact with other researchers who either are, or could be encouraged into, investigating and decoding dolphin language, especially with the aid of the Borrowed Genius procedure posted here.
Please relay our findings below to the attention of anyone you know who is involved with dolphins or with dolphin language. Please also take a look for yourself at our results on the dolphin language question, as follows:
Why We Have Not Understood the Dolphin LanguageHere is a prediction — that formal investigators will eventually find that the dolphin language uses only internal states of feeling and being as its referent. No nouns. Sometimes as modulated by circumstance, but always the internal state as the central issue.All human languages use external sensory referents — rock, table, person, lemon [nouns] — together with their descriptors [adjectives], interrelationships, sequence, actions, etc. We refer only slightly at best to the modulation of such referents by our subjective internal states, to the extent that we often fool ourselves into thinking we're talking about something else when we're only talking about ourselves — i.e., "This food tastes lousy!" or "What a stupid piece of music!"For dolphins, to use objects as (external) referents in a language would at best be something of an extreme insult by assuming severe sensory impairment of the dolphin spoken to, and thus his untrustworthiness and danger to the pod or host.
What a dolphin says to another dolphin:
I am I! — with this background ancestry and pod/family identity or relationship, my unique flavor as characteristic in that pattern.
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Here's how I feel, generally — and at this moment.
Impression of flavor patterns being like light patterns (in the water and on the bottom) being like sound patterns.Becoming once again a dolphin, going toward a distant island beyond the horizon — only that's my human translation, not how he thinks of it --
(I feel reaction to) a million striations of blue! (Between shore and sea)....
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(Underwater), I react to this flavor and special quality murk for this far (offshore).
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To go with the (current toward the island) because I'm not hungry. (I'd go up-current or cross instead, if hungry.)
Closest human equivalent to experience: just letting your eye follow a particular thread in a rich tapestry. Tapestry is of the senses; the real referent is my internal state as associated with or in reaction to that thread, rather than the thread itself. "Hungry" is associated with what we'd call upwater or cross-current swimming, and I'm more into what is the pattern of motion in swimming than I am into experience of any other referent in that context.
This writer concludes from this experience:
Humans and dolphins need each other's language and thought tools. We humans tend not to know who we really are, and are prone to anomie. We dolphins need to concretize referents in order to build other things in addition to social relationships and music and the art-sense of freely towering depths.
Comments to
Win Wenger
- Whale 'makes human-like sounds'
22 OCTOBER 2012, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT - Elephant learns to mimic Korean
01 NOVEMBER 2012, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT - Can different species 'talk'?
13 MARCH 2008, MAGAZINE - Animal world's communication kings
01 MAY 2007, SCI/TECH - NZ dolphin rescues beached whales
12 MARCH 2008, ASIA-PACIFIC
The Colbert Report
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Whales may not be human but that doesn't mean they are not conscious or aware.
About Whales; Strange But True - 1.http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061127111607.htm (brain neuron similarity) - 2. Brain size problem http://www.highnorth.no/library/myths/br-si-bo.htm
3. Brain Complexity http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=are-whales-smarter-than-we-are -
4. Evidence of conscious awareness from smaller, less complex brained animalshttp://animalpetnews.blogspot.com/2011/09/about-bird-intelligence-part-1.html .
In other words, if the evidence is accurate then we should be asking the killer whales if they even want to leave rather than make the decision for them (dangerous oceans out there).
Judge, Jury & Executioner - Whales
What doesn't kill whales? They can't even sunbathe without dropping dead.
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Note thier brain science... Of Whales and Men by R. Douglas Fields.
Note: Intelligence has to do with the inter-connectivity BETWEEN neurons NOT brain size or surface area. Besides other factors of course. (i.e. Win Wenger .com)
When you cut an animal does it not bleed? How can they not have feelings? Cut yourself. Is your blood the same color as thiers? How can a dumb animal possibly do this? = Elephants Mourn Loss of the Elephant Whisperer
From BBC World News Elephants grieving - BBC wildlife.
A Dolphin Helps Whales To Safety - Animal Hero